Raul Castro, the Cuban leader, has told the actor Sean Penn that he would be willing to meet Barack Obama, the President-elect, after he assumes power in the United States, although he added the encounter should take place in a "neutral location", for instance Guantanamo Bay.

Spare a thought for Osama bin Laden's driver, the Guantanamo Bay inmate who has been set free after years of imprisonment and is to be returned to his native Yemen to serve out the remaining month of a five-and-a-half-year sentence.

A judge in Washington has ruled that the US government has no grounds to continue holding five Algerian men who have been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for seven years, and should free them without delay. He ruled that a sixth Algerian should continue to be held because evidence against him is stronger.

In his first major interview since polling day, President-elect Barack Obama said last night that upon taking office he would close Guantanamo Bay and ban torture by the American military. He also said it would be "a disaster" if the US car industry were to collapse in the midst of today's economic crisis.

Gordon Brown shook hands yesterday with terror suspects who had been locked up in Guantanamo Bay because of their alleged links to al-Qa'ida. The surprise encounter came when the Prime Minister, who is on a four day tour of Gulf states, visited a "correctional centre" in Saudi Arabia for Islamist extremists who are being "deradicalised".

David Cameron has called on America and the rest of the world to reject "neo-conservative" policies in the post-Bush era so that democratic nations can act with "moral authority". Setting out his approach to foreign policy in a speech in Pakistan, he described himself as "a liberal Conservative".

* There was a time when Ben Okri graced the Jonathan Cape list. Then, a few years back, he signed with Rider, a sister imprint at Random House that leans toward the spiritual and the mystic, with Starbook, published last year. Forsaking once more the literary blandishments of Cape, Okri has now re-signed with Rider for Tales of Freedom: "a superb, lengthy novella surrounded by a necklace of smaller pieces" which offer "unusual, more transcendent ways of looking at our extreme, gritty world", revealing "the wealth of freedom beyond the confines of our perceptions".